that's the key
by ncfan
Summary: -Kurenai, Shizune- Kurenai, in labor.


**Characters**: Kurenai, Shizune**  
Summary**: Kurenai, in labor.**  
Pairings**: past Asuma x Kurenai**  
Author's Note**: I was just thinking that going into labor is going to be an even more traumatic event for Kurenai than it is usually for women, since the father's nowhere to be found (Not that that is, sadly, at all unusual here either). Also, women's bones really _do_ soften during pregnancy, to the extent that the pelvis will come apart during labor (or so I was told); being female myself, I find this to be more than a little creepy. As it often is, I am taking a dim view of human nature here.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Naruto.

* * *

Kurenai thinks that no greater body blow can come when she's told Asuma is dead, but this is soon topped by the revelation that she can't even fight anymore, since pregnancy softens the bones in order to make the pelvis more malleable and birth easier. Fighting was the only comfort she had left to her, and now it's gone too.

And now it's all topped by the spasms gripping her softened body, the blood drifting in rivulets, slow and lazy and ugly, down her legs.

The blinds are drawn over the room and the room itself is dark—Konoha has lost most, if not all of its finer equipment since the village's decimation by Pein. This birth will occur with only painkillers and the assistance of a medic who hovers at the ready beside Kurenai, pale face with dark eyes solemn and long-fingered hands tense. Shizune is nothing if not ready.

Kurenai wishes she could say the same.

"I'm not ready," she whispers and Shizune only shakes her head, never opening her mouth. They both know this child is coming, whether Kurenai wants it or not and she's not sure that she does want it. Maybe it's simply unnatural, but she's not sure she wants to cradle a baby in her arms.

She's a kunoichi, not a mother. She knows how to give death. Not life. Kunoichi make bad mothers.

Kurenai wanted to be alone for this, apart from Shizune who is only there in capacity of medic-midwife; the younger woman is nothing if not versatile. She doesn't want witnesses to gawk. She doesn't want well-intentioned but hurtful whispers about how harder it's going to be without Asuma here.

She already knows how much harder it's going to be without Asuma here. Kurenai doesn't need to hear others say it.

There are so many things Kurenai regrets, will always regret. They shadow over her like a storm cloud, like the rain she's always hated. Little girls born in Sunagakure but brought to Konoha as an in-all-but-name prisoner of war and then sifted into the village like so much collateral don't like rain.

She knows she won't be a good mother. The thought _Kunoichi make bad mothers Kunoichi make bad mothers Kunoichi make bad mothers_ keeps running through her mind, screaming at her the example of every kunoichi she has ever known who has become a mother. They are all dysfunctional in some way, too sheltering, too coddling, too harsh, not gentle enough.

The thoughts that kunoichi sometimes (far more often, Kurenai suspects, ever than what is reported) kill their children in order to be freed from the burden, especially if the pregnancy is unplanned or the result of a mission or rape (all too common) won't leave her either. She's heard the stories, actually knows kunoichi who have smothered, savaged, poisoned, put away their children. They always have the same blank eyes.

She doesn't want to be like them.

And Kurenai doesn't know if she'll be able to love her child.

Because she has loved few and has never loved easily, and there is little of anything left in Kurenai. Her impending child has already stolen from her, stolen of her body; now it attempts to steal from her heart too, and Kurenai has never taken too well to thievery.

The slow dread comes over her when she realizes that even after childbirth she will have to fight to feel anything at all, will have to fight to feel anything but apathy for her own flesh and blood.

Maybe she'll be one of _those_ kunoichi who brings a pillow over her baby's face and never lets go.

Maybe she's just another unnatural being like she's always been speculated for her illusions.

Kurenai's illusions have sapped everything away.

"Do you think… Asuma will ever know he's a father?" Kurenai manages to gasp out, and gives voice to her deepest, most visceral regret, that she never said a word to Asuma about this while she was still alive. The pride built from being born and raised in the desert got the better of her, she supposes.

Shizune seems not to hear, rubbing a hand over Kurenai's forehead, smooth and freshly cool when everything else seems sweltering and so unbearably hot. "It's getting there." She doesn't know the child's gender but still that's not a reason to put such an emphasis on "it", or maybe Kurenai's just hearing things. She's always had a problem with hearing things.

Shizune melts in and out of the shadows, wringing a rag and letting it drip over Kurenai's sweat-soaked forehead and rancid hair. She moves like a mobile automaton, automatic and jerking, emptier and more hollow like she's seemed ever since she had her soul forcibly ripped from her body and then returned during the invasion.

Like the heart and mind's gone a little dead, but the body still works.

"Keep breathing, that's the key. Keep breathing, that's the key."


End file.
